The decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syrian asylees was handed down on First Street, Washington, DC, but it will be felt in Damascus, Beirut, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, and far beyond.
On June 25, the US Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration’s decision to terminate TPS programs for thousands of Syrians and several hundred thousand Haitians living in the US under humanitarian protection.
Now, over six thousand Syrian asylees in the United States are forced to face a return to Syria, a homeland that many of them no longer recognize. “It feels like we are being besieged,” one Syrian asylee affected by the decision, who asked not to be named due to the uncertain legal situation, told me. “You cannot get any other visa processed. Everything is in limbo.”
Syria continues to be a fragile state with over 15.6 million in need of humanitarian assistance due to decades of authoritarian rule under the Assad regime, compounded by a decade-and-a-half-long conflict, which concluded with dictator Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in December 2024.
Syrians living in the US under TPS comprise small fraction of the 12.5 million Syrians estimated to be displaced around the world—over half of Syria’s pre-war population. But the Supreme Court decision carries implications for this wider group, too. It sets a precedent for Syrian asylum-seekers and refugees in other major host countries, including Germany, Austria, France, and Canada, and signals to those governments that similar measures are permissible, despite the fact that Syria is not close to ready for the diaspora to come home.
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Returns to Syria
Ten days after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, I was at the Syrian-Lebanese border. Hundreds of Syrians waited in line, Syrian identification cards in hand, eager to see a country that many of them had not returned to in over a decade.
For some, returning to Syria was an easy choice. Rapidly deteriorating political and economic conditions in Lebanon—accelerated by increased hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in September 2024—had made it especially difficult for Syrians to see a future in the country. In the year following Assad’s departure, over 437,000 Syrians in Lebanon returned to their homeland through both formal and informal border crossings.
For many others in that crowd—especially the men visiting on behalf of families they left behind in Lebanon—this first visit was part of a process of observation before committing to a permanent return, in what has been referred to as a “wait-and-see” approach. For example, in Turkey, despite political opposition from most national parties, Syrians were allowed to visit Syria in order to make an informed decision about whether to return.
In the year-and-a-half since then, estimates indicate that over 1.6 million Syrians have returned to their homeland from Turkey, Lebanon, and other nearby countries. An additional two million who were previously internally displaced throughout the country have returned to their original homes.
Underlying these statistics are monumental decisions made by each Syrian and their respective family members regarding the pros and cons to return to a state in significant political, economic, and social transition. Most were waiting for the US to remove sanctions and Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, paving the way for an economic revival, and for the transitional authorities to restore basic utilities such as water and electricity.
In September 2025, I met with several Syrians in Germany. Most had already received German citizenship after living in the country for over eight years, and they were still grappling with the choice of returning to Syria. Some sought to support the new government’s transition, but more often their reasons were personal—to reclaim property or take care of elderly parents, for example. Those who remained in Germany were not ready to let go of the life they had sacrificed so much to build.
A country in limbo
Syria is not yet safe for return. Both Syria and Haiti continue to have a “Level 4: Do not travel” advisory warning on the State Department’s website—the highest warning issued, typically reserved for active conflict zones. The UN Refugee Agency in December 2024 declared that Syria was not yet safe for return and has continued to maintain that returns must be “voluntary, well-informed, and carried out in safe and dignified conditions.” In June 2025, the European Council concurred that conditions are not yet ready for a large-scale return, though it offered support for refugees “who voluntarily wish to return.”
The reality on the ground has been documented extensively in regularly issued humanitarian reports, UN briefings, and World Bank economic and development assessments. Syria’s physical reconstruction alone is estimated to cost nearly ten times Syria’s projected gross domestic product. Syria also remains one of the world’s most unexploded ordinance (UXO) contaminated countries, with estimates of 15.4 million people at risk of death and injury from UXOs. In fact, UXOs and land mines are the leading cause of death for children in Syria—with estimates of over 320,000 UXOs remaining throughout the country.
Syria’s political transition has also led to ebbs and flows of violence throughout the country. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry documented over 1,700 deaths of members of the Druze minority in southern Syria in July 2025 at the hands of rogue elements of Syrian government forces. Earlier that year, over 1,400 Syrian Alawites living in coastal towns along the Mediterranean were killed, according to independent reports.
The ongoing conflicts involving Lebanon, Iran, and the wider Middle East have also created precarious security conditions and instability for Syrians considering return to the country. The escalation of hostilities in Lebanon, in particular, have led to the displacement of over 200,000 Syrian refugees and Lebanese nationals crossing the border into Syria to flee violence in southern Lebanon, leading to further strain on Syria’s ability to welcome back its citizens at scale. These developments continue to bring pause to Syrians considering returning permanently to the country, reinforcing that Syrians are caught between several crises rather than moving forward to a durable solution.
These conditions continue to serve as barriers for Syrians living in the US and elsewhere consider return. Many of my friends and colleagues who came through the TPS program worked tirelessly to establish themselves—learning English, raising children in American schools, contributing to their communities and neighborhoods—while quietly holding out for a stable country to potentially return to. As another Syrian affected by this decision told me, “What we have demanded from the beginning is time—time for people to figure out what pathways exist for them. The issue is that the country is still on the pathway for recovery and conditions are not ripe for a full return.” The Supreme Court decision therefore has profound consequences at this stage of Syria’s transition and does not encourage Syrians to make the “voluntary, safe, dignified, and orderly” returns mandated by international law.
Setting a global precedent
The US ruling does not exist in isolation. Within days of Assad’s fall, countries hosting Syrian refugees started issuing statements suspending asylum applications, and in some cases, moving to deport Syrians. In Denmark, after temporarily pausing asylum cases in December 2024, the decision was lifted a few months later. Belgium, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom followed suit, only to lift these decisions a few months later. But the impulse was consistent. Governments around the world read the fall of the Assad regime as permission to send Syrians home, regardless of the conditions on the ground.
Actual Syrians feel differently. In Belgium, only 7 percent of Syrians surveyed indicated they were ready to return. In Germany, over 66 percent of Syrians indicated in December 2024 that they would like to stay. In April of this year, Chancellor Friedrich Merz appeared alongside Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and declared that both men hope 80 percent of Syrians living in Germany will return home. But only a small fraction of that number have left—four thousand out of the roughly one million Syrians living in Germany, or one in 250.
A decision from the Trump administration—now affirmed by the US Supreme Court—to revoke legal status from thousands of Syrians gives other host countries political cover to take similar definitive measures. These legal tools represent a direct challenge to the principle of non-refoulement, the prohibition of returning refugees to places where they face serious harm.
One could argue that Syrians living in places like the US and Germany will want to stay regardless of the conditions on the ground in Syria. And that is true in many cases. I can speak to countless examples of Syrians who have made positive contributions to American society through their work, their character, and their children. Many have earned refugee status or been naturalized as US citizens.
Most Syrians who have returned recently were living in neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Turkey, where they are risking less to return than those living in the US and Germany who would have to “surrender hard-won legal protections,” as an expert from Oxford University argued. But as we are seeing, those legal protections are eroding quickly.
A report from the Migration Policy Institute illustrates the complexities of refugee return to fragile and recovering states. The report argues that “blanket withdrawals” of asylum protection for individuals from post-conflict states like Syria need to be considered and weighed carefully, ideally with a transition period—for both the receiving state, as well as host country economies and communities—to allow individuals to visit their country before returning permanently
What comes next
The issue of displacement will not simply disappear. With ongoing crises across the Middle East, compounded by the unavoidable impacts of a changing climate, economic instability, and a rapidly growing youth population, the pressure on the asylum system will only increase. We have seen what occurs when unprepared systems—in both rich and poor countries—absorb asylum seekers and refugees at an unprecedented scale.
The US decision will have repercussions on global order. At the center of those repercussions are not abstractions—they are people. They are good neighbors in the US who built lives here in good faith, under legal protection, waiting for a Syria they could return to.
That Syria does not yet exist, and this ruling does not change that.
Diana Rayes, PhD, is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.
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Image: The Syrian Civil Defense, with support from the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, begins implementing a project to remove debris and war remnants in the cities of Daraya and Douma in rural Damascus, starting on November 26, 2025. (Photo by Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto)